


Æfenoffrung

by tibeyg



Series: Pornalot 2017 [3]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: A Very Long Sentence, Animal Sacrifice, Arthur's Bum, M/M, Ritual, Spanking, Triple Goddess Equals Six Limbs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 21:42:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11929848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tibeyg/pseuds/tibeyg
Summary: Arthur, the chosen king of the Triple Goddess, undertakes the ritual to become her sacrosanct champion.





	Æfenoffrung

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Pornalot 2018 Challenge #3: Kink link.
> 
> NB: There's portrayal of ritual blood sacrifice right at the beginning which is quite brief, but if that's not your cup of tea, do not by any means feel obliged to read it.

Arthur admires the way Merlin kills. How his eyes burn unearthly-gold to stun his victim, how his knuckles whiten as they seize its neck, how the blood runs thick-red over them after he slices its throat. As king, he had the privilege of bearing the divine flame here. When Merlin tosses away his sacred blade of onyx, he receives its from Arthur. His brief touch leaves a smear of blood – still warm – on Arthur’s fingers. 

When the fire catches on the fat of the carcass and rears heavenwards like a stallion, Arthur kneels before Merlin.

‘I call the Triple Goddess witness,’ Merlin shouts above the rumbling fire. ‘We come humbly before your fearsome presence. May you take gladly the life we have gifted you! Gorge and be satisfied on the tenderness, sweetness of its yielding flesh! And’ – and here a warmth licks into his detachment as his eyes lower and meet Arthur’s – ‘we beseech, in return, for your sacred protection for your loyal servant, the Pendragon king, your chosen protector of Albion.’

‘ _Hear, hear_ ,’ comes the rumble of the gathered crowd behind.

‘With this sign,’ Merlin continues, bringing a finger black with clotting blood to Arthur’s bared forehead, where the front of his hair has been contained by a crown of hallowed hawthorn, ‘I declare him sacrosanct.’ The finger swirls out a pattern against Arthur’s skin. ‘May any – man, woman, or beast – who touch him with malintent meet with your wrath.’

Already half-congealed, the blood does not trickle into his eyes. He watches the fire begin to abate, and acolytes pull the roasted carcass from the flames as the awaiting crowd flocks forward. 

It is then that Merlin, hands wiped clean, draws him away. They slip soundlessly into the dense press of forest, leaving only a trail of flurrying hawthorn petals. He hears the crackle of undergrowth underfoot, the hooting colloquy of unseen nightfowl. The only light Arthur sees is the one behind Merlin’s eyes as they flare to determine their route. 

He knows what must happen now. The ritual of sacrosanctity is twofold. He allows Merlin to lead him beside a stream, where moonlight glitters on the moving waters, and strip him of his garments.

He kneels naked on the moss. Merlin lights a fallen branch with his eyes and thrusts it upright into the ground. Arthur cannot help it; he marvels when Merlin draws back his roughspun hood to reveal the chiaroscuro sternness of his beauty. Atop the obsidian-black of his hair is a woven hawthorn crown. Where Arthur’s blossoms, his is bare – stripped of even its thorns. When he removes it, Arthur sees the black rims of congealed blood encrusted around his fingernails.

With a flash of his eyes, the crown unravels into a switch, thick and tantalising. Merlin tongue twitches out to wet the divot in his lower lip. He arrests Arthur’s gaze with his own, then begins to step in circle around him.

‘Are you willing, Pendragon king, to be the Goddess’s Protected?’

‘For my people, I am willing.’ Arthur keeps a momentary shiver from his voice. He feels the end of the hawthorn slide across his skin and a trail of gooseflesh rise in its wake. 

‘Are you willing, Pendragon king, to prove yourself worthy of enduring the trials that await you?’

‘For my people, I am willing.’

There is a beat, then, 

‘So be it,’ says Merlin, and the switch disappears and reappears in a sharp _crack_ across Arthur’s buttocks, and

‘ _Ah_ ,’ Arthur gasps out; stars glitter into his vision, and another _crack_ reverberates into the forest, across the gurgling stream,

‘ _Ah_ ,’ he cries as it smacks again, he can feel its horizontal ghost sear across both cheeks, and Merlin, in a detached voice, says,

‘Count,’ and Arthur says,

‘ _Four_ ,’ in an exhale, feeling that he should be stronger and more capable of withstanding this, he has endured jousts and duels and combat, but a mere stick is – 

‘ _Five_ ’ – unmanning him, shuddering his voice like a spurting youth’s, and he catches his breath when the smooth end of the switch grazes along his flaming skin, tracing a stinging line and following it into the fold between his cheeks, delving to nudge at the dip of the oft-frequented furl there and darting away; the sudden consciousness of his arousal, and how could he be like this, so incapable of control, so like an animal, so – 

‘Six,’ he says; he uses the voice he employs on the battlefield and it shakes only a little, the voice for command, for leading men to

‘Seven!’ battle, to war, that is what this is, isn’t it, the Goddess is warring with his mind, so he grits his teeth against her torment of these unfamiliar, these humiliating blows, turning his most beloved on him, he knows now, he knows _how_

‘Eight!’ his voice is growing stronger, more self-assured, more the man she on whom she would lay her six hands to bless, he can – 

‘NINE!’ he roars.

There is dead silence. When he cracks open his eyes he sees Merlin’s face before his, creased with emotion.

‘Arthur? You did it, my love.’ His eyes glisten in the firelight. ‘She has accepted you. Feel –’ He lifts Arthur’s fingers to his forehead, to the crusted blood sign.

‘It’s gone! I –’

‘Yes! She removed it,’ Merlin presses his lips to his forehead, his mouth. He clutches at the flesh of a pectoral, over his heart. ‘Did I hurt you, love? It pained me so.’

‘It is nothing,’ Arthur says, though his buttocks still sting. ‘But now that’s over, I think there’s a little something you can do for the Goddess’s Protected king.’

‘Yes?’

And Arthur takes his hand and leads it down his torso, and watches his love’s concern dissolve into mock indignity as he realises its destination, and gasps a kiss into his mouth when that beloved hand encloses on aching flesh.

Let the trials come. He would face them with the Goddess above, and Merlin at his side.

**Author's Note:**

> This was possibly my most fiddly entry; I went off on so many harebrained research tangents (including emailing my Latin lecturer for resources, whoops!), before ending up with...this. 
> 
> I wanted to do something that could have been set in the """historical Arthur's""" 6th century Britain and had something to do with a pagan ritual. The premise was inspired by Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon initiation ritual, but then the more research I did into Dark Ages paganism in Britain the more tenuous the possibilities became (for instance, most of the information for the Celtic festivals Bradley mentions is Irish, not Welsh/English - which is where the Arthuriana is usually set). In fact, by the Dark Ages, most of the Roman-British and indigenous Briton population had converted to Christianity, and there was only a very small window of time before the Anglo-Saxon invasions fully Christianised the island. 
> 
> In order to reconstruct this Druidic ritual, then, I had to use a lot of background established already in the show (i.e. the Triple Goddess), mixed in some of my research on Celtic paganism (i.e. the importance of blood/human sacrifice, fire, etc.), and some ideas from Roman paganism (sacrosanctitas, for one). I tried not to align the setting of this ritual to any particular festival, although its liminality is meant to be reminiscent of Bealtaine. In saying that, I did want to avoid necessarily equating it with Bealtaine given that it is a) an Irish/Scottish festival, and b) there's no evidence that its rites were necessarily sexual.
> 
> "Æfenoffrung" is Old English for "evening sacrifice".
> 
> If you like the enemies-to-lovers trope then check out [my gf's gay novel](http://valeaida.tumblr.com/post/149576789996/an-elegy-info-post), illustrated by me!


End file.
